Scholars Call for More Effective Teaching of Foreign Languages

New York--A number of books and reports in recent years have
criticized schools and colleges for neglecting foreign-language
teaching and have stressed that the inability of Americans to
communicate in any language but their own constitutes a serious threat
to the nation's economic and military security.

But the decline in the foreign-language training of Americans cannot
be reversed, experts attending a national meeting said here recently,
unless educators dispel the negative "image" that surrounds such
studies.

School officials, parents, and students correctly preceive that
foreign-language courses have been generally ineffective, said Leo
Benardo, director of foreign-language instruction for the New York City
Public Schools. Schools keep turning out students who have studied a
foreign language for three years and "still can't say boo" in it, he
added. "We need to sell a reasonable bill of goods and stop promising
more than we can fulfill."

Mr. Bernardo was among a number of foreign-language specialists who
discussed the state of their field and ideas for improving
foreign-language instruction during the 100th annual meeting of the
Modern Language Association.

'Start All Over'

Jean Pierre Cauvin, associate professor of French and Italian at the
University of Texas at Austin and a foreign-language consultant with
the College Board, supported Mr. Benardo's contention that
foreign-language training seldom seems to "take." "Students begin
foreign-language study in grades 9 or 10, study for a few years, then
go to college, where they have to start all over," he said. "Of those
students who go to college--taking a total of five or six years in the
language--few attain the proficiency of a native speaker."

Other speakers noted that students have also been "turned off" to
foreign languages by outdated curricular materials and needless
repetition.

Enrollments in foreign-language courses have been declining since
1915, when 36 percent of high-school students were enrolled in
foreign-language courses, according to government statistics. The
decline steepened in the 1970's after many of the nation's colleges
dropped foreign-language requirements for admission; that sent a
message to schools, according to Clifford Adelman of the National
Institute of Education, ''that foreign languages are not
important."

Today, about 15 percent of public high-school students take
foreign-language courses, according to Mr. Cauvin.

Several speakers noted that schools must share responsibility with
colleges for the declining interest in foreign languages. Schools have
tried to accomplish too much, they said, creating "false expectations''
that students should be able to master grammar, reading, composition,
and oral expression, as well as to learn about the culture of a foreign
country, in the limited time available for study.

Mr. Benardo argued that schools should narrow their objectives. They
should emphasize "practical aspects of the language," he said, rather
than attempt to teach students speaking and writing skills and the
works of a country's great writers all at once.

'Practical Skills'

Many of the efforts being made to bolster language instruction at
both the high-school and college levels, participants said, focus on
developing speaking skills and the so-called "practical skills," which
encourage students to learn language for real-life situations.

Last year, the College Board's "Academic Preparation for College," a
guide to the skills college-bound students ought to master, suggested
that their foreign-language training should focus on "active skills"
that they can actually use, Mr. Cauvin said.

The guide urges that students develop "the ability to ask and answer
questions in a simple conversation in areas of immediate need or on
very familiar topics; the ability to pronounce the language well enough
to be intelligible to native speakers; the abiltiy to understand, with
some repetition, simple questions and statements; the ability to [read
and write] short paragraphs; and the ability to deal with everyday
situations in the culture, such as greetings, leave-takings, buying
food, and asking directions," according to the report.

To accomplish this, said Robert De Pietro, chairman of the
department of language and literature at the University of Delaware,
courses must go beyond simple drills and repetitions and incorporate
dramatic situations that occur in everyday life.

Rather than teaching conversation or grammar from a book, teachers
can stimulate language learning by developing "scenarios" that students
help complete and in which they take part, according to Mr. De
Pietro.

Students need to communicate in ways "not simply designed to
exchange information but to emphasize some kind of practical
transaction. ... It's amazing how much question-and-answer drill passes
for conversation," he said.

Another problem in language learning, according to Leon I. Twarog,
director of the Center for Slavic and European Studies at The Ohio
State University, is that students learn at their own pace but must go
through classes that treat them as if they all learn at one pace.

Mr. Twarog described a self-paced-instruction program he has
developed over the past seven years with support from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Education Department, and Ohio
State.

The program, which employs teachers to answer questions, administer
examinations, and converse with students in the language, is widely
used by students and faculty at the university, Mr. Twarog said, and is
being implemented at several high schools, including Columbus
Alternative High School, Cincinnati's Princeton High School, Chagrin
Falls, Ohio's Kenston High School, and the Ann Arbor (Mich.) University
School.

In the program, students who attain a mastery of 80 percent or
better on an oral and written examination move on to the next sequence
of study. Students move through the curriculum as rapidly or slowly as
they wish.

"Language learning is like climbing a hill," Mr. Twarog said. "You
can climb, run, or walk, as long as you get to the top."

The instruction is not intended to replace regular courses but to
make less-commonly taught language courses available, he added. Tapes
are available for self-paced instruction in Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese,
Czechoslovakian, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Latin, Polish,
Russian, Serbo-Croation, and Spanish, he said.

Teaching Abilities

Other speakers pointed out, however, that the quality of the
language curriculum is principally dependent on the ability of those
teaching. If improvements are to be made, argued Claus Reschke of the
University of Houston, much work has to be done to improve the quality
of teachers entering the field.

Legislation that goes into effect this year in Texas mandates that
all new teachers must be tested in basic skills, Mr. Reschke said. In
addition, all new French, German, and Spanish teachers in the state
will be required to demonstrate by May 1986 a high level of oral
proficiency in the language that they teach. The state will establish a
minimum proficiency level based on a new scale developed by the
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (actfl) and the
Educational Testing Service. (The scale is a modified version of a
proficiency measure used by the Foreign Service Institute in
Washington, D.C.)

A national movement to improve the oral proficiency of high-school
language teachers and to place more emphasis on oral instruction in the
language curriculum is just getting underway, other participants
agreed.

Besides Texas, the state of Illinois is now in the process of
testing teachers on their oral proficiency, Mr. Reschke said.

This summer, the neh and the actfl sponsored a three-week seminar in
oral-proficiency evaluation for teachers of Spanish, French, and German
from the Northeast.

"The seminar was designed to provide intensive training in
oral-proficiency interview skills developed by ets and to explore the
implications for high-school curricula," according to Heidi Byrnes, an
assistant professor of German at Georgetown University who participated
at the conference.

She said oral-proficiency interview methods will allow teachers to
place less emphasis on "discrete-point testing" and enlarge the
"communicative aspect" of high-school language instruction. This has
been difficult in the past because, without a standardized measure that
includes precise linguistic criteria, "the concept of oral proficiency
has been seen as vague, subjective, wishy washy, [and] impossible to
measure."

'Real-Life Skills'

Although many foreign-language educators called for greater emphasis
on oral proficiency, some were concerned that the new emphasis on
"real-life skills" will completely overshadow cultural, literary, and
more "global" aspects of foreign-language education.

"Discussing works of art and reading literature are also part of
real life," said Barbara F. Freed, assistant dean for language
instruction at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the
Regional Center for Language Proficiency there.

The regional center, established this year with a three-year
$200,000 grant from the U.S. Education Department's Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education, will help the university
continue to move its language-instruction program away from "seat-time"
requirements to a specified level of proficiency as measured on the
ets\actfl scale.

The center will also serve as a resource center for other
foreign-language programs in the region and will sponsor inservice
training and seminars for teachers.

The goal of increased emphasis on oral proficiency, said Ms. Byrnes
of Georgetown University, is "not to provide a methodological solution
for all but rather a global approach" that can help teachers and
students enhance all foreign-language skills--speaking, listening
comprehension, cultural awareness, writing, and reading.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.